


Breaking Down

by femme4jack, fractalserpentine



Series: The Tales of Recline the Berthformer [9]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst, Battle, Intimacy, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Non Consensual, Plug and Play, Spark Play, Violence, field play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:04:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme4jack/pseuds/femme4jack, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The straps of the trailer bit deeply into his mesh armor, one of them coming close to crushing the components in his right pede.  Whatever Motormaster had in store for him, Recline was more likely to survive if he remained centered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fractalserpentine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/gifts).



> Part 1 of the long-promised "Recline gets captured by Decepticons fic." I almost gave up on this so many times, and would never have gotten to this point without the poking, urging, editing and encouragement of Fractalserpent *hugs forever*. 
> 
>   **Content: Violence, physical abuse, noncon hardline interface (forced recharging, attempts to force gestalt merge), angst, hurt/comfort.**
> 
> _Sister_Dear did some amazing artwork of Recline for the Tfmech_exchange on Dreamwidth. Check it out[here](http://tfmech-exchange.dreamwidth.org/4832.html)_

Recline did not spend a great deal of time beyond the immediate vicinity of the Ark, though he did enjoy walks in the nearby wilderness areas, collecting various materials for his amulets and energon additives. He occasionally accompanied Beachcomber or Hound on longer outings; both of them relaxed best outdoors, and he could just as easily 'bed down' (as Chip called it) in a meadow as in his quarters.

Samwise, a Great Dane mix, usually came on his hikes. Even though Hound had been the one to actually adopt the puppy, Samwise could often be found tagging along wherever Recline went, likely because of how much the good-natured creature enjoyed curling up on Recline's berthmode.

But much as Recline enjoyed his longer outings, there was little doubt that he was a homebody. He had no mobile alt, nor the need for speed and movement many of the others had. Even if Earth had a public transportation system for beings his size, the fact was that Recline came from a long lineage of bots _coded_ to be a homebodies. Under a different set of circumstances, he might never have ventured forth from Iridium unless furnishing the cadre's air yacht -- there was nothing like bringing your own sparked berth on your own sparked ship to display your status. 

No, Recline was perfectly happy to stay home. He knew he had an important purpose, and did not feel shame for his complete inability to be armed and dangerous. He was the one to greet the scratched, dented, and too often amputated troops upon their return, offering the comfort of his platform, cables and generous field to those who needed it most after an engagement. There was always _someone_ who needed it the most, and the Autobots had their own ways of sorting that out before they arrived back on base.

Assisting in medical was especially meaningful to him. His presence had a calming effect on damaged warriors who could not shut down their battle protocols, and he was, without a doubt, the best choice to hold mechs who could not safely be put in stasis. In more than a few cases, he had also been the berth to hold a mech whose spark could not be saved, making sure their final moments were full of love and peace. It was, paradoxically, the most difficult and rewarding part of his function.

Knowing that the Autobots got nervous if he ventured too far, Recline stayed within the security perimeter on his solo walks. The limitation did not bother him in the least. It helped them to know he was safely ensconced away, sure to be there when they needed him. The last thing Recline wished to do was cause his friends further anxiety. When he did actually get out for the periodic visit to Portland or Seattle, the journey was made in the protection of Prime's trailer. _Those_ were quite the memorable occasions. Turn around was always fair play, and Optimus apparently took great pleasure in strapping his favorite recliner down on road trips.

Thinking about fun times in Prime's trailer was helping distract Recline and keep him calm now. The straps of the trailer he was currently in bit deeply into his mesh armor, one of them coming close to crushing the components in his right pede. Whatever Motormaster had in store for him, Recline was more likely to survive if he remained centered. It was a lesson he had learned all too well in the vorns between Iridium and taking up with Sparkwire at the Medical Academy.

Recline wasn't sure if this had just been an opportunity grab, or if the Stunticon leader had been waiting specifically for him. All he knew was that one moment he had been walking along a forest service road toward a copper-laced gypsum deposit he had located within the security perimeter, and the next he was in the dirt, a fusion cannon aimed at his spark and a device shorting out his communications. Thankfully, Motormaster had only flicked Samwise away rather than crushing him in response to the furious barking and efforts to bite. The dog was knocked out, but the quick scan Recline had managed showed the injuries were not life threatening.

Recline's next thought had been concern for Red Alert. The mech would have an omega-sized freak out when he realized his perimeter had failed, and Inferno, who was a source of so much stability for the security director, was currently mopping up the response to an Earthquake in Mexico with the Protectobots. 

First Aid would also take it hard (and keep to himself just how hard he was taking it). He and Recline had been edging their way toward something deeper since... well... really since the gestalt had onlined. It had pretty much been love at first brush of fields, and even First Aid's ever-so-protective brothers tended to smoosh the two of them together as often as possible, whenever First Aid's over-clocked responsibility coding allowed. Recline had even been made an honorary Protectobot in a ceremony that had involved a lot of high grade, giggle fits, and a game Carly taught them called 'spin the bottle.’

That memory helped to calm Recline and made him smile a little, there in the darkness of the Decepticon trailer. This was a time to hold on to what made him whole, not to contemplate being severed from First Aid and the 'in-laws' entirely.

"Where are you taking me?" Recline softly tested the waters. He couldn't diffuse the situation until he knew the form the explosion was likely to take. 

"Shut the slag up, if you know what's good for you, Autobot!" the voice around him echoed.

The cables bit a little tighter in warning, though Recline noted that they stopped short of further injury to his pede. Motormaster knew he was poorly armored, then, and was taking care, at least for now. It made sense. Why make the effort to capture rather than offline him, if Motormaster did not intend him to serve some purpose? For the short term, anyway.

The raw brutality of the field buzzing against his own did not bode well for the longer term, though. Recline could not sense whether the animosity was directed at him in particular, the universe itself, or perhaps the sigil he wore -- but it was violent all the same, and barely contained. The only defense Recline had was his ability to use his field to gently manipulate the one around him. It was hard to reach out to a field pulsing with that much aggressive anger, hard to feel the sort of empathy that would allow for such a connection. It helped that he had plenty of experience with Autobot frontliners. In mechs like Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, he’d learned to find the undercurrents and eddies beneath the obvious fluctuations, and bolster those with the modulations of his own field.

There was real danger in letting his field mingle with the one currently around him, though. Motormaster, he feared, would not hesitate to crush him if he felt himself being 'smoothed'.

Recline called up several centering memory files, his affection for the many he cared for quieting his own buzzing edges. When his own field was modulated to a nearly invisible presence, he gently meshed more fully with the one grating against him, accepting whatever he found there with no reaction or judgment. It was not easy to find the undercurrents, but finally he brushed against something other than brute aggression. 

_Frustration_ was the most obvious eddy, with a barely detectable undercurrent of _shame_. The conflict inherent in those emotions could cause even a strong leader to lash out. Recline considered what he knew of Motormaster's team. They were a group with dangerously unbalanced coding and sparks, led by a mech who was much the same. 

Once Recline began to look more deeply into those currents, the truth of the situation became easy to guess. Motormaster was deeply loyal to Megatron, had been given charge of his team, and no matter how much he raged at them, how brutally he punished them, they were not the cohesive, unstoppable force Megatron demanded they be. The unacknowledged shame Motormaster felt made him strike out against his team even more brutally, in a vicious cycle. The frustration in Motormaster's field was the shadow side of the mech’s leadership qualities, the true-sparked sense of responsibility and duty, though misguided and twisted.

Recline briefly questioned the integrity of manipulating Motormaster's field without his knowledge - his stringent ethical coding was one of the many reasons his field-reading skills had not been capitalized on by SpecOps for interrogations. But this, at least, was barely within his allowable limits. He had a duty to do whatever he could to survive and get back home, so he visualized etching one of the ancient prayer glyphs, asking for wisdom and guidance, and then carefully modulated his field.

***

"Fix him!" Motormaster commanded, shoving Recline at the red-faced, blue and white mech, sending both of them staggering to keep their footing. Recline could not help but notice the shove had not been hard enough to damage. The massive mech was following normal patterns, to be sure, but Recline dared to hope that his field-smoothing efforts had not been entirely in vain. 

Clearly, though, such techniques would not be so easily applied here. The smaller Decepticon lashed out, striking Recline to the ground before whirling to face Motormaster with an expression both of defiance and terror. He was visibly shaking, anxiety and raw fear radiating vividly from his plating. He ran hot to the touch, so much that this world’s thin atmosphere seemed to shimmer around him, and Recline wondered if the heat was related to whatever malfunction was causing his severe tremor. 

But... fix him? "I'm not a medic..." Recline started, pushing himself back to his own pedes. He reached out on instinct to touch the blue and white mech, only to be violently thrown aside again, his mesh armor buckling and his arm wrenched hard before he could even register the attack or the pain.

"Keep your slagging digits off me!" the smaller Decepticon screamed, kicking at Recline’s prone form. The blow from sharp-edged pede was hard enough to perforate the berthformer’s dorsal mesh. Recline moaned, curling into a ball to protect his spark as his optics made several attempts to reset and focus, unable to tell if the smaller Decepticon was shaking even harder or if his own optical stabilizer had been jarred loose.

Motormaster roared and lashed out with a heavy fist, even as the smaller Decepticon drew back his leg for another kick. The frighteningly powerful punch connected with the shaking Decepticon and flung him halfway across the clearing with a terrible rattling clang. "Don't damage him, you slag sucking spawn of a half-clocked fragging-drone!” Motormaster snarled, stalking to stand over the still-shivering tangle of Decepticon limbs and plating. “This is the one that fixed their paranoid glitch of a security director. He's as soft as one of those insect humans and will be completely useless if he's injured!"

Fixed Red Alert? Recline squinted up at Motormaster in confusion. The director of security was certainly on his rotation on a fairly frequent basis, and he'd done couples sessions with him and Inferno when they'd had a rough patch. But there was nothing _wrong_ with Red Alert that Ratchet hadn't repaired. Red was outstanding at his function and had all the right skills to do it well. Like any security-coded mech, he needed others to connect with, who would pull him away from his hard coded isolation and paranoid tendencies. Inferno went a long way in providing that balance. Recline supposed that he did help Red Alert relax his defenses enough to allow his anchor to form a deeper bond.

Then again, it was probably better for Motormaster to believe Recline had some hand in 'fixing' Red Alert, if that was the purpose of his abduction. He flinched as Motormaster reached down with a massive hand, and seized the smaller Decepticon by his cervical cabling... and then *lifted* him, just picked him up by the neck, like the three-mechanoton warframe weighed nothing at all. Only semi-lucid, the smaller mech squirmed, catching at Motormaster’s wrist. “I ‘dun need any soft-sparked frameless autobot piece of fragging furnit--”

"He need to be online for you to fix him?" Motormaster demanded.

Recline vented, offered up a prayer of forgiveness... and shook his helm. What he needed was time, and charging an offline mech could give that to him. It wasn't that different than the treatments he sometimes gave in Medical while mechs were still in stasis, though at least he knew he had consent agreements on file for the Ark-based Autobots. It would be impossible to recharge an online mech who obviously did not want anyone plugged into his systems. 

He was thankful that he'd asked Mirage to transfer his loyalty coding to Optimus rather than deleting it altogether. Prime had given him very clear orders in case of capture, and Recline could, at least in the short term, do what he needed to do in order to survive, even if it was in violation of his berthformer oath.

Even still, Recline flinched when Motormaster lifted his free hand, and brought it down on the smaller mech’s already-dented helm with a ferocious bang, knocking him temporarily offline. 

“You’re a berth. Act like one,” Motormaster snarled in his terrible, hollow tones, stalking towards Recline even as he swept the damaged Decepticon up in both arms. 

As quickly as his battered frame would allow, Recline shifted into his alt, his berthform settling atop the thick padding of grasses and wildflowers. Recline would try to be as noninvasive as possible, while still offering a short-term result that might be enough to placate the dangerous gestalt leader. Motormaster placed his burden onto the berth’s sun-warming surface more gently than Recline would have predicted. 

"You have a joor and a half, berth. He'd better be able to combine when the others get here, or I'll crush you like the worthless scrap metal you are," Motormaster growled, before stomping to the other end of the clearing to keep watch. 

 

***

The stinking meat sack was touching his pede again, Sunstreaker noticed. He was tempted to ignore the thing, but he couldn't help but note that the creature was behaving oddly. It would normally pass him by, give him a quick sniff that left an offensive streak of glossa slime, which had to polished off his plating. The frontliner had, obviously, adjusted his subroutines early on to prevent himself from flicking away all things organic, like he wanted to. The dog was, like the other nominally intelligent animals who wandered in and out of the Ark, designated as an ally and non-pest. Debatable, but it wasn't his place to argue that with the officers.

This time, though, the animal was visibly agitated, its loud, woofing vocalizations clearly directed at Sunstreaker. A few barks, and then it would run a few meters up the forest service road and back again, then vocalize some more. The dog was alone, too, though Sunstreaker had a clear memory file of that ridiculously unarmored piece of furniture walking up the road with it at the beginning of his shift. 

"The frag is wrong with you? Primus, why can't they upgrade you so you can talk?" he growled at puny creature at his feet. It woofed with even greater agitation, running up the road and then looking over its shoulder as if to see if Sunstreaker was following. "If that berth fell and twisted a cable... why does Prime even let him out without a nannybot? Slagging ridiculous." 

Sunstreaker sent a terse message to the mech monitoring comms that he was checking something out, and ignored the inquiries that followed. The animal's woofs became higher pitched, more excited as it ran up the road, then ran back, putting its forepaws on his shin armor and _licking him_. "Get off, you vile thing. Just show me where the fragging berth went. Slag, Hound's gonna pay if you're just trying to get attention," Sunstreaker muttered, extending his scanners to maximum and grumbling about a certain fragging piece of furniture who was higher on his action hierarchy than made any sort of common sense. Not that he had any choice. Fraggers would scream at him and he'd be toast if anything happened to Recline on his watch.

***

"It was Motormaster, no doubt about it, Prime," Hound said, scanning the signs left of the brief struggle at the northern border of the security perimeter. He ran a digit along Samwise's back, making him squirm with happiness; without the dog they would likely not have known of Recline's capture until he missed an appointment or check-in. "Happened sometime in the last two to four hours." 

:: _I'm going through the logs now, Prime,::_ Red Alert commed from the security office, where he was remotely monitoring the conversation. :: _It appears that some sort of dampener must have been used. There is an eight minute outage beginning 3.78 hours ago in that sector that did not activate an alarm. It should have. I will not recharge until I find out why._ ::

"I know you will do your best, Red Alert, but the last thing Recline would wish is for you to stress your systems with lack of recharge. We will find him." 

:: _There should also be logs of Motormaster coming and going on the remote sensors along whatever access roads he used, but there are none._ :: Red Alert continued, as though he had not heard. 

"Red Alert, contact that Pentagon liaison who owes you a favor, for access to their satellite feeds and see if we can determine where he went," Optimus replied, forcefully resisting the urge to simply transform and roar down the road in search of the non-combatant. "I'm sure they have at least one pointed in our direction."

"Why the frag are we still standing here?" demanded Sunstreaker. "We need to go find and deactivate that filter sludge, then slag the pieces and do the same to rest of that glitchy 'Con team." 

"Find him where?" Hound countered, though clearly twitching to find the berthformer. "Too many logging trucks and semis on the main roads. We'll lose the trail outside of our perimeter, and could end up going in the wrong direction entirely." 

"Prime, I'd say the slagger grabbed him because he needed him," Jazz interjected. "And my hunch is that this was outside of the chain of command. Megatron wouldn't have any use for mechs who need a sparked berth. Motormaster acted on his own."

"The probability is high, then, that Motormaster will either let him go or dispose of him before Megatron expects him back on base," Prowl added, holding back from giving the odds of the latter.

:: _Blaster,::_ Optimus commed, :: _contact the law enforcement authorities within a six hour radius based on Motormaster's average speeds, as well as the US-Candian customs and border patrol. Have them put out an all points bulletin to be on the lookout for a semi matching Motormaster's description, and for any of the other Stunticons.::_

 _::Right on, Prime. I'm on it,::_ Blaster responded.

Optimus turned to face his second and third in command. "I want no effort spared to recover Recline. Time is of the essence. What do you propose?"

Jazz spoke first, bouncing on his pedes and ready to hit the pavement. "Have everyone available head on out in different directions in teams, coordinate with those already on patrol to cover the widest area we can. That way we'll have mechs ready to check out any spotting of ole Motormouth or his team. Keep the Aerials here on standby, and Skyfire to collect the P-bots from Mexico so we'll have both our big guys ready to tear Menasor a new exhaust port."

Optimus nodded. "Prowl?"

It would spread them thin, Prowl wanted to say. If Megatron did know of Recline's capture, and was using it strategically, drawing a large number of mechs in different directions might be exactly what had in mind. 

But the strategist could not bring himself to object.

***  
Recline quickly determined that the mech on his platform was designated Breakdown. The glyph was as much threat as designation, embellished with modifiers for enough strength, speed, and firepower to break down any barrier that stood in this mech’s way, any defenses his enemies threw before him. But the english translation had a second meaning, and one all too apt. Breakdown himself was broken, his firewalls in tatters from previous efforts to correct his glitch. Absent those walls of code, it was chilling how easily Recline could access the Decepticon’s systems, the few walls still left as easy to sweep away as wispy cobwebs. 

No wonder the mech did not want anyone close to him. And no wonder he would not, or could not, combine with his team any longer. Gestalts could only combine with the consent of all of their members, and even unconscious resistance to the bond could cause a malfunction in that unique transformation.

Recline tried to stay on the periphery, skirting the edges of those deep-seated wounds -- though he did inject a line of code to make sure the broken Decepticon would remain offline for the duration of this defrag cycle. A quick access of the Stunticon's recharge logs was enough to tell him what he needed to know: Breakdown did not just recharge poorly; he did not recharge at all. At least not in a normal fashion. He could not. The only time he shut down was when he was made to, either through forced hardline or Motormaster's preferred method. 

Coding rape or battering -- that was how Breakdown recharged, or rather, how he entered temporary forced stasis. It only added to the vicious downward spiral. 

Recline's cables stirred in discomfort. Doing this for a mech so wounded... it made Recline no better than the Decepticons who had been trying to 'repair' this profoundly suffering mech. Sure, his platform was molded perfectly for Breakdown's comfort, and he longed to tenderly stroke the too-hot frame in compassion and build the kind of charge that would let Breakdown temporarily forget the pain. But the brutal truth of the matter was that Recline was in the Stunticon's systems without his consent, in order to save his own plating. 

There was so little he could do to help. Perhaps with dozens of sessions, focussing directly on issues of spark resonance and balancing, as well as the underlying emotional response coding issues, Recline could help Breakdown learn to power down on his own and fully defrag, but only if Breakdown _wanted_ to. But even if Recline did, to where would Breakdown return? The Stunticon team was no haven. Unlike the Aerialbots, who sometimes sniped at one another and had their share of troubles but in the end would do anything for the other members of the gestalt, the Stunticons did not appear to be an anchoring group.

Or maybe they were, but their concept of caring was just so broken. Perhaps beating Breakdown into forced stasis, or demolishing his firewalls to permit the gestalt to merge, was Motormaster's idea of care. In fact, judging by the last three and a half hours spent in Motormaster's trailer, Recline would guess that the brutal leader truly intended to help Breakdown in his own twisted way. Trying something else, something kinder, might not even occur to him. Motormaster was powerful, after all, but he was also little more than a newspark.

It made Recline want to keen. How could he not care for mechs who were so brand new to functioning, and already so broken? And yet, what could he possibly do? One deep defrag was the best he could offer Breakdown at the moment, combined with a few hours in a peaceful, compassionate field. 

It would make little difference in the long term. 

But it was what he could give, and he needed to steady himself in order to give it. Breakdown might not have memory logs of his time spent in on Recline's platform, but on some level he would register the field woven with his own. Determined to do his best, Recline accessed memories that could possibly bring the flavor to his field that a gestalt-sparked mech would need the most. While the memories themselves belonged to others and would not be shared, he certainly knew what it felt like for a fragmented gestalt to become whole again.

_He held First Aid with arms as well as his cables; the shaking medic half pulled away and then sank fully into the embrace. Sometimes Recline's mechform was the one most needed; his body could shape itself to embrace sharp angles just as his field could accept the rougher emotional edges. There was always a moment when First Aid would finally let go, field surging with all of the pain, worries and anger he held so close. Recline met those turbulent waves, even the scathing self-loathing, with pulses of acceptance. He knew better than to offer sympathy or to protest with the truth of First Aid's nobility and goodness. First Aid could not deal with that, not yet. He needed to be hard on himself before he could forgive himself._

_It was just how he was wired._

_First Aid did so much both to anchor and shield his team. It cost him -- and it cost them. While they needed him to be strong, they also needed him, at the end of the day, to let go, to give them his pain as well as his solace. Sometimes, when First Aid was hurting the most, sharing first with Recline helped him to share with his team in turn and renew their bond._

_This time, the pain was deep. No medic was perfect. But this was the first time First Aid had come close to losing a mech due to making the wrong call rather than circumstances beyond his control. It did not seem to help that Ratchet and Hoist both assured him they would have made the same decision. First Aid held himself to a standard no mech could meet. He had lost trust in himself._

_'You'll find your confidence again,' Recline wanted to say, but did not. It was still too soon. 'Not yet, but you will. Everyone makes mistakes. Prime makes them, Ratchet makes them, I've made many, you will make them. And you will be furious with yourself, you will hate yourself, but in the end, you learn from them, and you'll be a better mech and medic from the lessons you've learned.'_

_Recline knew better than to say it was okay. It wasn't. Not right now. A mech's spark hung in the balance within the stasis tank. There was nothing more to done until the breach in Huffer's laser core either self-repaired from the inside or his spark lost containment altogether._

_First Aid muffled his quiet keens in the plating just above Recline's spark, even now aware of his brothers waiting just outside, trying not to upset them. Soon he would reluctantly lower his blocks and let them in. Their love was just too much at the moment._

_Recline felt the moment when First Aid finally lowered the block, that distinct shift in his field that showed he was no longer alone in his spark. The door to the Protectobots' quarters opened and four mechs rushed in, arms and cables entangling where their sparks already had joined, combining in a way that was just as profound as becoming Defensor. Recline began to unravel himself to leave when a pale blue hand wrapped around his arm._

_"Stay," Hot Spot urged him. "He wants you to."_

_"I..." There were so many reasons not to stay. The resentment that briefly surged in Blades' field was definitely one._

_"Stay," Blades growled. ::I don't like it,:: he commed privately, though Recline was certain the others already knew. ::I don't like that he has to show you this slag first. He shouldn't need a mediator. But he does, and better you than someone else. Stay.::_

_Recline flashed a grateful glyph, accepting the invitation, his field modulating to weave itself within the complex web around him, extending four more cables. "Let me charge all of you, then, when you're ready."_

_He kept his own presence as unobtrusive as possible as the gestalt took in First Aid's reluctantly shared memory, enveloping him with their worry and love. They, in turn, shared their frustration that he shut them out and acceptance of just why he did. Now he was where he belonged, and they soothed his anger at himself within the broader context of their love for him and the honest assessment of just how much he had accomplished and learned in such a short time._

_First Aid pulled Recline more deeply into the link, unwilling for him to simply be a passive observer, sharing as much as he could of the gestalt bond, of being many yet one as he finally allowed himself to sink into the love he had been blocking, letting himself be subsumed into the fierce care and protectiveness that was Defensor..._

Without violating the sanctity of the memory, Recline created a file of the feelings First Aid had shared as his gestalt became one. As he pulled Breakdown into a deep defrag, he cycled the memory of those feelings over and over again. On one level it was cruel because Breakdown never experienced that in functioning. But it was all Recline could give him, along with the care and compassion of his own field. 

It would not be enough for Breakdown. But it might be enough to ensure that Recline would continue to function a while longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The others would call him foolish or glitched or worse for caring, but Recline couldn’t just leave this broken newspark alone like this. Not without instructions, directions, some glimmer of hope. For better or worse, Motormaster and his team were the only Decepticons who actually cared for Breakdown's wellbeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this chapter since mid JULY and would never, ever have been able to finish it (nor the next one that is in progress) without fractalserpent, who switched from being awesomesauce beta to cowriter extraordinaire. Thank you so much fractal. You are pure high grade for the muses.
> 
> Also, yes, we know that Motormaster's trailer doesn't come off in G1. But... you know, AU. And it will get better for Recline. Promise. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Content: Graphic violence, robotic gore, noncon, mild mind-control/influencing, angst**

The only indication First Aid gave of the incoming message was the briefest pause in his welding of Inferno's cracked shoulder strut. The search and rescue mech had dived in to shield a half dozen self-appointed rescue volunteers who had insisted on entering a highly unstable structure, one Inferno had already declared clear of survivors. They escaped with their lives, but Inferno lost one of his ladder components in the collapse as well, leaving him partially sensor-blind since it doubled as a primary sensory structure.

"First Aid?" Inferno asked quietly, when the medic finished the weld on the largest crack. 

First Aid gave a small shake of his helm, activating the soldering irons on his fingers to fill in the smaller cracks. "I'll have time to finish this before Skyfire arrives," he said softly. "But your ladder component will have to wait. Too much protometal and sensory circuitry in that for me to do it here."

"That ain't what I was askin'." 

First Aid paused. "I... I just..." he looked despairingly around at the widespread destruction from the massive quake that had rocked the coastal city of Ensenada. The Mexican government and international organizations were relatively organized now, and Autobot sensors had determined that everyone still living had been rescued from the collapsed or damaged structures. It was a recovery mission from here on, not rescue. But everything still looked so bad, and there were so many refugees, not to mention the near constant aftershocks.

"He'll be alright," Inferno said. "And they'll be okay here. They were dealin' with this sort of scrap long before we showed up."

First Aid simply nodded, a little too quickly, attaching Inferno's plating he had earlier repaired and then switching off the sensor block. "I need to pack up," he said, rising to gather and subspace the supplies he would need from the shed where he was storing them. "Best take the rest of the day off until those welds set, Inferno." He left the supplies he'd brought for treating the humans. He would contact Médecins Sans Frontières to donate those.

Inferno watched as the medic silently sorted through his things, noting just how much plating patch, wiring, and protometal filler he was packing into his compartments and subspace. Recline had so little true armor. 

"He'll be alright, First Aid," Inferno said again. "He's a survivor." The big red mech rose from the dusty ground and grasped the medic's white-plated shoulder. 

"I'll... I'll have your ladder component ready as soon as I can," First Aid said quickly, his visor not meeting Inferno's optics. "My team's gathering at the airport."

"Get goin' then, I'll behave and not strain the welds," Inferno said. He reset his vocalizer as though he wanted to say more, but First Aid quickly turned and transformed, sirens blazing to get through the rubble-strewn streets faster. 

"Get him back and don't ever let him go," Inferno said to the empty air.

* * *

:: _Prime-my-mech,_ :: Blaster commed as Optimus was slowing down to drive through the small town of Lynden, Washington, just south of one of the smaller border crossings into Canada. :: _Been monitoring the law enforcement channels, since our buddies take time to smell the daisies before they pass the goods along. They've got sightings that match Dead End and Wildrider, both near Pendleton headin' toward La Grande._ ::

Optimus resisted the urge to curse as he braked and turned into a parking lot. The position wasn't all that far from base, just three and half hours to the east. Meanwhile, he was seven hours northwest of that position, and many of the others were likely just as far away.

:: _Well done, Blaster. Whom do we have closest?_ :: 

:: _Gears and Huffer are east of that position, gracing Enterprise, Oregon with their good cheer. That's about an hour and a quarter at their speeds. Prowl and Sunstreaker are an hour north of Boise, and could make it almost as fast if Prowl turns on his lights and bats his eyelashes at the state patrol. Oh... hold on a sec big bot... hot diggity dog! We've also got a forest ranger who spotted a Formula One racer that had no business bein' on a logging road clearing ruts he had no business clearing! That's east of La Grande, in Wallowa National Forest. _::__

Optimus had already turned, and was roaring west toward Interstate 5, the fastest route south, radioing the Washington state patrol to ensure he’d not be delayed. :: _Connect me to Huffer, Gears, Prowl and Sunstreaker. Are the Aerialbots, Skyfire, and the Protectobots ready to move?_ ::

:: _Ready and waiting, Prime. Patchin' ya in now._ ::

* * *

Soundwave heard all things. 

That did not necessarily mean he reported all things. Most of the intelligence Soundwave collected and collated was beneath Megatron’s notice, anyway. But some of it... some of it was simply leverage. The Decepticon ranks were unfriendly places, and symbionts were fragile creatures. Ensuring their safety -- ensuring that no fighter, no matter how overcharged or enraged, so much as touched a symbiont -- required a complex network of bribery and blackmail. And the favors that Soundwave collected... well. Those came in handy, too. 

Between the favors and the leverage, Soundwave could have staged an effective coup many times over. More importantly he had the leverage to assist or prevent Starscream from doing so, depending on what benefited Soundwave and his cohort the most. So he used his capital sparingly, with the conservative patience of one who knew that true power lay always behind the throne. 

And so it came as no surprise to him when he detected those first frantic calls over hastily-encoded channels, and heard descriptions of the Stunticons on the law enforcement frequencies in six western states. After all, Soundwave, via Frenzy, had planted the information about the berthformer in the first place. And Laserbeak, with customary subtle skill, had delivered the implements that Motormaster needed for a successful abduction. Should the project succeed, Soundwave would add a powerful gestalt to the long list of mecha who owed him their functions. In the far more likely event that Motormaster failed... well, it would be Soundwave to whom Motormaster would be forced to turn. 

Soundwave would make sure of that.

For if Motormaster proved recalcitrant, or attempted to double-cross his benefactor, Soundwave would simply inform Megatron of just how fragile his prized gestalt was, and how desperate Motormaster had become. Motormaster would lose any status he had gained within the Decepticon ranks, and Breakdown would be offlined and replaced. Motormaster came close some cycles to doing that deed himself, to be sure, but Soundwave knew better than to suppose the gestalt leader would ever take that final step. A gestalt bond was no simple thing, was difficult to weave and still harder to break. Breakdown's offlining would weaken the entire gestalt, and there was no guarantee of a successful graft of another spark into the complex bond. Thus, Motormaster’s efforts to save the glitched melee warrior... and thus the opening for Soundwave to exploit.

Yes, Motormaster would have no choice but to turn to Soundwave. One did not send mecha plagued with psychological instability to Hook, after all, especially ones from a rival gestalt. In the end, when Soundwave completed reprogramming Breakdown, he would have an operative on the combiner team, and Menasor would belong to him entirely.

To that end, Soundwave kept Motormaster’s little secret, kept the Autobot's desperate search for their pleasure-berth from Megatron’s audials... for now. Such a service was, of course, never without cost. Soundwave simply added it to Motormaster’s ever-growing list of favors owed.

* * *

Recline was aware of Motormaster looming over him in the chilly night air, could feel the intensity of that glare in the relentless buzz of the massive warframe's field. It was becoming increasingly taxing to compensate his own field to keep Breakdown in a bubble of peace on his platform. Breakdown was relaxed the way a deeply recharging mech was meant to be; why couldn't Motormaster keep his domineering field on the other side of the clearing where it wouldn't interfere with Recline's ill-fated efforts? 

Recline swiftly firewalled the irritation and focussed on remaining an island of calm for the mech in his care.

"You have five more breems, berth," Motormaster growled.

"I am aware of the time frame," Recline responded in smooth tones, as devoid of feeling as his mentor had ever been. Recline felt the ground vibrate as Motormaster took another menacing step forward. 

"Well, is he fixed?"

Recline hesitated. He could lie: 'yes, Breakdown is repaired, let me go'. 'Yes, Breakdown is repaired, I am no longer any use to you... alive'. Or he could tell the truth: Breakdown would hopefully be able to combine with his team, at least this one time, and with his systems fully defragged he’d probably even _need_ to. But it wasn’t a permanent fix. Not to mention there was nothing to stop the gestalt leader from simply plundering Breakdown's logs and finding out for himself exactly what Recline had done, and what he simply couldn’t do; Motormaster would surely kill Recline just the same.

And... misleading Motormaster wouldn’t help Breakdown. The others would call him foolish or glitched or worse for caring, but Recline couldn’t just leave this broken newspark alone like this. Not without instructions, directions, some glimmer of hope. For better or worse, Motormaster and his team were the only Decepticons who actually cared for Breakdown's wellbeing. 

Hurriedly, Recline began uploading another file, a training meditation taught to mecha of his class almost before they could transform. It was a simple focussing algorithm, a looping recursion that cleared the field and eased the processor. He overlaid it with a recording of Breakdown's own processor waves during the defrag, interlaced with the same emotive stream from the merged Protectobots that Recline had used to help the Decepticon achieve that level of recharge. 

"I have given your teammate eleven and a half hours of peaceful recharge and a deep defrag. I’m putting a meditative memory file in his temp storage -- it may calm him enough to recharge on his own... should he choose to use it. But," Recline paused to allow all the urgent modifiers he'd laced around the simple conjunction glyph sink in, "he _must_ be given the time and space, free from threats of violence and systems violation, to make that choice. If you force him to access that file, instead of letting him practice with it on his own, the eventual backlash will be worse than what you are currently dealing with."

"You dare criticize my methods?" Motormaster thundered. "He's a Decepticon warrior, created by Lord Megatron himself! Not some soft-shelled piece of Autobot shareware!"

Recline's cables tightened reflexively around the mech on his platform, and his metalogel prepared to quickly envelope Breakdown to absorb the blow if it came. "It is not my place to judge your methods. But if they were truly working as intended, would you have abducted me?"

Recline routed even more energy to his field amplifiers to dissipate Motormaster's immediate and violent electromagnetic surge, even as he felt the air move against his haptics from the gestalt-leader's raised fist.

The blow did not fall. 

Motormaster spat a binary curse and stomped away to the edge of the clearing. Shortly after, Recline heard the distinctive sound of a high performance engine followed by a transformation sequence and the fall of pedes coming toward the clearing. He did not bother focussing his audials on the harsh words exchanged, but rather turned his full attention back to the mech on his platform. Unless Recline missed his guess, he had only a few more minutes to hold Breakdown close.

* * *

:: _Of course we'd end up as Stunticon bait,_ :: Huffer whined as he and Gears plodded up logging road switchbacks toward the patchwork of old clearcuts. :: _I'm the most expendable. How many engineers do you even need on a planet without any proper building materials? Prime already thinks I'm a waste of energon._ ::

:: _I've got dust from the road clogging every single cog,_ Gears added. :: _Sun'll probably be up before we find them, too, and it's sure to get too slagging hot for my infrared to do any good. Pretty sure that last pothole before we transformed knocked my sensor solenoids out of calibration anyhow.::_

Despite the near constant complaining back and forth on their comms, the two minibots walked carefully and quietly, Gear's infrared stretched to the maximum in all directions for any sign of the Stunticons or Recline in the moonless night. They stepped carefully over the large dikes and ruts the Forest Service had bulldozed into the dirt road to prevent its use by motorized traffic once the logging operation had been completed. Not that those would stop Cybertronian-enhanced suspension -- Motormaster's eighteen wheels had left clear parallel tracks, easy to follow even in the starlight. The minibots moved almost silently on hydraulic-cushioned pedes. Without the sound of their own altmode engines to interfere, their sharp audials could pick the the faintest noises, including small organics rustling in the forest around them... and then, distantly the rumble of two engines.

The two froze, their sharp sensors detecting the distinct harmonics that gave away the alien origin of the vehicles, which had both of them immediately scrambling down the steep, brush-covered embankment below the road. ::Prowl and Sunstreaker already?:: Huffer asked, as though the officer and frontliner arriving early was a personal affront. 

:: _Can't tell. And now I've got slagging pine pitch gumming up my emitters and dirt up my drivetrain._ ::

:: _Cut the chatter,_ Prowl interjected, using the officer frequency. :: _Wildrider and Dead End are ahead of us and approaching your position. They do not yet appear to be aware we are following them. Proceed according to plan. We will approach your position from the eastern set of switchbacks._ :: 

Gears and Huffer swiftly shut down not just their comm chatter, but also anything that might register on the Decepticons' sensors. Neither so much as cycled their vents as the red Porsche and gunmetal grey Ferrari rumbled along the broken road above, easily clearing the ruts and dikes despite their visibly low-slung suspension. Every minibot learned over time the skills of running silent. It was one advantage they had over less efficient mechs.

The two frontliners passed them by without slowing, and Gears tracked the Decepticons on his enhanced infrared as the warframes made their way up the switchbacks. He marked the exact point where the two transformed and made their way off the road, disappearing into a patch of trees that had not been cut. 

'Stunticon bait,' Huffer mouthed, catching Gears's optics. Gears gave a quick nod and they briefly clasped hands before following silently on foot.

* * *

Recline normally brought his patients back online slowly, often with some lazy interfacing as part of the process, depending on the mech involved. In this case, his only goal was to be far enough away so as not to be turned into scrap when Breakdown rebooted. He wasn't sure if that fate was avoidable unless Motormaster chose to prevent it. 

"Time's up," Motormaster snarled from across the clearing, even as Recline heard two more engines stop, followed by transformation sequences and the heavy thud of warframe pedes. Motormaster and all three of the others were present now. Recline could hear them arguing across the meadow in their heavy Decepticon accents. 

Recline hesitated -- would Motormaster come to claim his teammate? The Stunticon leader did not. The berthformer vented, then wrapped Breakdown firmly in his cables, ready to lift him off of himself and slide him to the ground once the berthformer had gone through the onlining sequence.

Recline normally would return motor control early in the process, to avoid causing his patient to feel helpless, which could trigger a violent reboot. In this case he didn't dare. But he also could not leave Breakdown unattended as he onlined -- Recline needed to make sure Breakdown's cooling, energy dispersion, and fuel consumption systems initialized properly after having been replaced by the berthformer's own throughout the deep defrag. 

It felt profoundly wrong to not gently stir Breakdown's higher level processing, welcoming him back online with warmth and love. But Breakdown would surely experience that as a horrifying invasion. No, Recline had no choice but to leave conscious functioning and motor control to the very end, and then get the frag away.

Recline double checked that his personal messages were still carefully firewalled and encrypted, adding secondary notes both for Optimus and First Aid. The first included a copy of his base code and the code of several other berthformers he had in his archives. Perhaps the future would allow for a new berthformer to be created. The second note...

Recline never regretted that he and First Aid had proceeded slowly and cautiously. First Aid was a member of a gestalt, with many deep bonds already upon his spark, and Recline.... By coding and the nature of his very spark, Recline was available to all who needed him. Those demands were not insurmountable, but... First Aid and his team were so very young. There had been no hurry.

Recline was thankful for that, now. Should the berthformer be extinguished, First Aid would not experience his first bond-sever. He ejected the capsule that held his encrypted messages beneath his platform base, out of sight, a cable deftly burying it in the ground. Wheeljack's invention would mold itself to assume the shape of the matter around it - in this case a buried stone. It would not emit a signal until pinged with the proper code, and others would know to search for it. Such capsules were standard practice.

Recline had never before needed to use one.

Steeling himself, Recline initiated his patient’s bootup sequence, and then backed up. Fast.

Not fast enough.

Breakdown came online like the warframe frontliner he was, battle protocols first, weaponry second. The decepticon’s small gattling gun squealed as it spun up, spitting a spray of lead in an arc across the clearing, clanging off solid steel across the clearing, drawing a vitriolic curse from Motormaster. Recline didn't even have a chance to register the pain and damage of the projectiles that sank into the mesh armor of his thigh before Breakdown had twisted his pedes under him like a cybercat, launching himself at the nearest threat. Then Recline was crushed to the ground under repeated blows from Breakdown's fists.

* * *

There were -- there were tracks throughout Breakdown’s processor, flags where bits of code had been rejoined or tucked away. Nothing was the way he’d left it, nothing left to him alone -- the Autobot’d had his filthy servos on everything, every part of him. There wasn’t much a gestalt member could keep private anyway, precious few parts that the gestalt couldn’t access. But now... even those had been opened, rifled through. 

Breakdown beat the frame beneath his, uncaring that his fist ripped right through the meshy armor into the semi-liquid metalogel below. Broken wires sparked, hissed. Fury gripped him. One pummeling blow ripped in further, and Breakdown reared back, talons spread. He’d carve the interloper apart, rend the spark that had so violated his every system, claw through the mechanisms that linked this filthy Autobot's spark chamber with the rest of his systems -- 

\-- and a far bigger hand caught that descending fist of knives. “Quit it, you fragger,” Motormaster hissed, and something in Recline wondered distantly how the massive warframe had managed to cross the clearing so fast, so quietly. “We need him functioning to keep you fixed.” 

“I’m not glitched!” Breakdown’s vocalizer broke with emotion. “I d-don’t need to be fixed anymore, not by a f-filthy autobot! He was everywhere, I can feel -- just fragging everywhere -- I’ll extinguish him!”

Motormaster hauled the frontliner bodily off Recline, just lifting him off his pedes and shaking him, like a terrier with a rat. “You will not,” the gestalt leader snarled, a hollow boom of a command that rumbled through Breakdown like thunder. Something was wrong with Recline’s audials, sounds were muffled, distant, but he could *feel* that order through the soil and stone under his back. 

A pair of pedes appeared in Recline’s glitching field of vision. “He’ll probably offline when we put him in that hidden cell, anyway,” Dead End said, morosely. 

“‘That mean we can finish busting him up?” asked Wildrider, eagerly. He’d never gotten his claws in a pleasure berth before. He wondered if all that fancy metalogel was flammable. 

“No.” Motormaster dropped Breakdown. The frontliner crashed down, staggering, but righted himself with satisfactory speed. He was also, the gestalt leader couldn’t help but note, no longer shaking -- at least not badly. The semi turned his optics on Dead End and Wildrider. “Get the trailer. Bring it here.”

“Awww!” both bots protested, but complied at Motormaster’s snarl, apparently unwilling to risk his wrath. The semi turned back to where Drag Strip waited, apparently certain that his orders would be obeyed. 

Recline wasn’t nearly so certain. Breakdown stood still for a moment, apparently reviewing the files the berthformer had uploaded. Then he approached Recline again, kicked a little at the prone mech’s bullet-punctured thigh. “T-think you’re gonna get your claws in me again, yeah? You better think twice, coder,” he hissed. 

"I'm sorry," Recline tried to say through a haze of pain worse than anything he'd felt, even in his long vorns on the streets before taking up with Sparkwire. His vocalizer would only produce static, too many of its wires disconnected and sparking. Other holes and great gashes in his mesh armor just burned, or crackled at the edges with misdirected charge. He could feel the protometal-laced metalogel openly seeping out. “S...sorry....”

Recline lifted his head. It felt heavy, like his tensors had lost power, weren’t quite linked up right. A songbird, startled from its perch, fled with chirps of alarm. Something stirred between the trees again, settling, and if Recline hadn’t been so... so tired, he never would have noticed it. But injured as he was, there was little to do but watch, while the Stunticons traded insults behind him. Willowy-thin aspens bent and bowed in a wind, as if they were being pushed aside.

There was no wind.

Recline wasn’t quite sure, later, how he moved so fast. He came up on his pedes and lunged, catching Breakdown around the waist. He couldn't even shout at the frontliner to get down, not with his vocalizer shooting sparks. He felt the shot more than heard it, felt the massive metal slug split the air over his helm as both he and Breakdown hit the ground hard. It’d been aimed for the Decepticon’s chest, and after all Recline had done to soothe that tortured spark, he’d be smelted before he’d see the newspark extinguished!

"Recline, you slagging glitch!" he heard someone yell. Someone with Gear's voice. 

Then Motormaster was bellowing at the Stunticons to attack and all hell broke lose.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Menasor’s right arm, in Drag Strip’s colors, transformed, an energon blade longer than Recline’s entire body folding outward. The edges blossomed with heat, a violent, plasma-coil red, and droplets of liquified steel hissed from the tip, fell like metal tears. And with a single sweep, Menasor brought it crashing down upon on the still unsteady Defensor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content: Battle violence, semi-explicit intimacy (pnp, field, spark-play, kissing), angst**

"Stunticons, attack!" Motormaster bellowed. All five of the warframes charged, crashing into the trees where the shot had come from, firing. Recline could hear Gears screaming at someone to fall back, and then the minibot's vocalizer abruptly cut out. Oh Primus, was he injured? Deactivated?

Recline tried to lift his head--but the effort of first tackling, and then being thrown by the heavy-plated warrior had damaged him further. "Minibot trophies for the wall!" Wildrider shouted with glee. "I want the orange one’s spark chamb--what the frag?!"

His optics damaged and dim, Recline felt more than heard several rounds of projectiles whistle overhead. The impacts, however, were surprisingly subdued--tiny clangs against armor, sizzling sounds followed by outraged bellows. Acid pellets? Before he could try to pinpoint the noise, it changed again, the sizzle of the projectiles followed this time by the crackling WHOOMP of plasma blasts, roaring from what seemed to be a different direction. 

The Stunticons returned fire, and Recline lost track of the battle, his audials pummelled by a multitude of concussive booms and bellows. There was the sickeningly familiar clang of metal hewing metal as the firefight turned into a melee, the shuddering thud of pedes against the earth on which he lay. And yet, he found it hard to care, drifting off into darkness.

A deafening crack of thunder brought him back. A field of grey static flashed, his optics fritzing as they tried to focus, and he realized he was staring at the dawn-lit sky. At some point he had rolled, perhaps trying to move further toward the trees, and was now on his back. Something white was flashing through the grey. Around it flared a golden halo, bright yellow flickers that kept shorting out his delimited field of vision.

Recline reset his optics, forcing overrides through damaged internals, and they cleared momentarily. There was more than just the sky above him, he realized. Skyfire hovered there, a massive white guardian, his shields deflecting the multitude of blasts aimed at the broad white expanse of his underside. Recline's vision flickered--it was, he thought dimly, almost like watching an old earth movie. He watched the battle numbly, feeling as though his spark was shrouded in a thick blanket, everything muted and distant. A rotary emerged from Skyfire's cargo bay, dodging the Stunticons' blasts, deflecting them with bright flares of energy-consumptive shielding as it dropped toward the ground. Then four other figures followed, flinging themselves out as well. They plunged downward in a desperate freefall, unable to avoid the blasts in their direction, their speed barely checked by the rotary who preceded them, blades beating the air to slow their fall. They landed heavily, crashing to the ground in a tight cluster at the far end of the clearing. The effect of their arrival on the Stunticons was immediate.

"Stunticons! Form Menasor!" Motormaster roared from somewhere behind him.

Recline had seen Menasor combine before, in vids, in his patients’ memory files. The gestalt was always ponderous, sluggish, all but a sliver of its conjoined memory and processing facilities obviously devoted simply to staying linked together and functional. The least temptation provoked Menasor’s rage, led him astray, distracted his rampages. The Menasor gestalt was fickle, chaotic, and largely ineffective. 

This was not that Menasor. Recline was able to shift his helm just enough to watch in horror as a very different Menasor locked smoothly together, five mecha becoming one in a seamless and brutally graceful dance. A change had been made, a cache of code optimized. Some vital threshold had been crossed, like soldiers over the Rubicon -- and there was no going back. 

And this reborn behemoth was charging toward Defensor, who was rising slowly, far too slowly, from the ground where the Protectobots had plummeted. Charging toward Recline's friends, his _lover_. 

What had he done?

Menasor roared, harnessing the conjoined vocalizers of his constituent parts. A pede the size of Recline’s entire body thundered down beside him, crushing the grass, the soil, the wildlife. Suddenly Sunstreaker was there, a blur of yellow to Recline’s damaged optics. He launched himself bodily at the giant, clamping on to shoot point blank at what had always been the weakest of Menasor's links, where the left leg joined his massive pelvis. This time, however, the monstrous mech moved far faster than Recline had ever seen. He contemptuously grabbed Sunstreaker, throwing him aside with one hand. The other swatted away a slug that came from the other direction, calculations as fast as physics. “AUTOBOTS!! MENASOR WILL CRUSH YOU ALL!!”

The gestalt's dialogue, at least, was no more clever than before. 

Menasor’s right arm, in Drag Strip’s colors, transformed, an energon blade longer than Recline’s entire body folding outward. The edges blossomed with heat, a violent, plasma-coil red, and droplets of liquified steel hissed from the tip, fell like metal tears. And with a single sweep, Menasor brought it crashing down upon on the still unsteady Defensor.

“No!” Recline gasped, fingers clawing into the soil, trying to push himself up. Defensor staggered backwards, firing a series of blasts that only seemed to bounce off the roaring, snarling Decepticon gestalt. Menasor's blade rose again, intent on cleaving Defensor's left arm from his body. 

Something else landed in Recline's field of vision, a flurry of armor and pedes and dizzy colors. It fired a concussive cannon at Menasor's back at point blank range, a blast of heat and thunder, even as Defensor's left arm suddenly detached on its own accord. Transforming into an ambulance, First Aid raced around Menasor and between between Skyfire's massive pedes, towards Recline. 

Overhead, the crack of more sonic booms and the slow motion, deeper echo of a gestalt transformation happening in the sky above. Menasor was firing wildly, but could not stop the deafening roar of thrusters as Superion landed to hem him in. "MENASOR! SUPERION WILL VANQUISH YOU!" 

Then deft and gentle hands were on him, and a field swamped his own with a desperate mixture of gratitude and anxiety as First Aid began frantically patching the ruptures in his frame, stemming the leaking energon and metalogel. 

"I'm going to take you offline," First Aid said.

"P-please," Recline tried to say, but his vocalizer was still damaged, shorting out. His comms were also down. In desperation he tried to extend a communications cable. The wounds torn in his frame spat a shower of sparks, the electrical cascade deflecting harmlessly off First Aid's armor. 

First Aid steadily found an operating medical uplink, and plugged in.

// _You're going to be okay, Recline. Just have to stabilize you for transport--_ //

// _Aid, please don't let them kill them. They're just newsparks. Just like you... your brothers... the Aerials. No one to guide them. Please... Aid. Please._ // Recline knew he sounded incoherent, frantic and babbling. But he still continued to try.

He felt First Aid's hesitation, the understanding washing through his field... and the conviction that right now all he could do was focus on saving his patient.

// _Please Aid!_ // In desperation, Recline tried to sit up. Damaged metal tore, conduits ripped apart, sparks showering outward as the patch First Aid was trying to put over the protoform-deep gash in his chestplates ripped free.

He tried to shout, to scream in denial as a silent apology washed through First Aid's field. Then, like a switch being thrown, he dropped into darkness.

* * *

His field sensor array came online first. As usual, the array seemed to bypass processors entirely and shunted the input directly to his spark. He felt the spin and pulse of his spark adjust accordingly, meshing his own field with practiced ease to the familiar one that waited alongside his berth.

Familiar... but not the one he expected. That did not stop him from sending warm tendrils to lazily dance through the other's field while the remainder of his systems onlined. Recline felt almost deliriously grateful to be able to do so, though was unsure why. 

His most recent segments of temporary memory storage were locked and not yet integrated with his spark-based quantum storage, though they were flagged with a key. He was in medical, then. Temporary medical blocks were standard practice after particularly severe injuries or trauma, and helped alleviate the tendency of panic upon onlining. That way patients could access the memories once they were ready to integrate them properly, usually after they'd been briefed on what to expect. Recline had certainly assisted enough mecha over the vorns with that very task, soothing and comforting as the trauma was reprocessed and the emotive content already written on the spark formed the necessary connections with the relevant data.

He ran a systems check, followed swiftly by a deeper diagnostic, using the medical protocols native to berthformer coding. Fully a third of his mesh armor had been replaced, the new sections forming jagged seems, not yet fully integrated into his existing mesh. He was desperately low on metalogel, a large portion of his gel-mass replaced with temporary protometal filler. His nanites were working furiously to culture replacement gel using... using a core protometal infusion? Primus, what had happened? Deeper scans of the foreign protometal mass in his core identified at least half a dozen separate donors. Some of the nanites had already been stripped of their originating code as they were transformed by the berthformer’s systems, he noted; there might have been even more. Primus! What a risk for them to take, especially when the Decepticons could engage them at any time. Omega Supreme, Skyfire, and the unique blended signature of Superion made up the bulk of the donated protometal, with smaller amounts from the largest frontliners who could better afford the loss. 

Recline reviewed the most recent of his unlocked logs. He'd been on a walk within the perimeter with Samwise, collecting materials for amulets and energon infusions. Then...

Oh. Oh dear. No wonder the remainder of the log was locked.

He was ridiculously fortunate to be functioning. Oh Primus, he hoped there'd been no casualties involved in a rescue. Yes, it would be best to wait to integrate those locked files. He had a feeling that it would not be wise to attempt to handle them without a monitor.

He reached out again, intertwining more thoroughly with the still patiently-waiting field, and then began to online the remainder of his systems.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," a cheery voice greeted him. Recline did not need to boot his optics to know Wheeljack's indicators were flashing a content pattern of indigo and ultraviolet. 

Ratchet, Hoist and First Aid, then, had likely shut down for much-needed recharge. If they’d been elsewhere, working on other mecha who’d been damaged in this confrontation, there would have been more anxiety in the engineer's field. 

Recline booted his vocalizer, noting that the majority of its wiring and components were brand new, with distinctive earth-specific molecular traces. 

"Is everyone okay, Wheeljack?" Recline asked, the new vocalizer operating as proficiently as the medic who'd built it, taking those raw materials and manufacturing the the parts within his frame -- leaving his own distinct patterns and motifs in the process. Would a Ratchet-incubated vocalizer make his glyphs a bit more... colorful? 

"They are, now that you're back online, Recline," Wheeljack responded, patting him on the arm, the Brooklyn accent he'd adopted almost as much a comfort as his mellow field. 

"Any injuries besides mine?" Recline asked, deliberately slowing the spin of his spark and running a calming algorithm. Normally calming, anyway. For some reason, now it made him feel anxious, like he should be remembering something.

The engineer pulled up a stool and sat, leaning his elbows on the berth next to Recline's head, propping his helm on his interlaced hands. He knew better than to hold anything back. "It was a close call with Huffer 'n Gears, though not as close as it was for you, mind ya. They... well, you'll be integratin' that memory soon enough. They saw you was hurt and engaged the Stunticons before backup arrived, poor slaggers. Prowl took some heavy blows, but he's back on duty, minus a left sensor panel that's finishin' up assemblin' in the tank. Sunstreaker had enough dents to be a complete bastard. Hot Spot's got an armor-deep souvenir from Menasor 'cross his chest, but he's healin' up just fine."

Recline nodded, onlining his optics at last and reaching out to take one of the engineer's hands, needing the touch of metal as well as fields. Thank Primus they all were okay. "You going to monitor me while I integrate this, my friend?" he asked quietly. He was already well aware of the extent of his injuries, and their likely source, as well as the tender, exacting care that had gone into what was essentially a partial rebuild. Primus, they didn't have the resources for that. Not for a noncombatant, with absolutely zero military function, who was as protometal dense and complex as Recline. 

"Well, that's just the thing, Recline. First Aid is insistin' it should be him. Ratchet and Hoist are divided on that. He... it's gonna be hard on him to see it first hand. But he feels like it would be best for ya both to do it together. So we decided it should be your call. If ya want it to be him, though, you'll have to wait a few days."

"I'm sure he's exhausted," Recline agreed.

"Like that would stop him. You'll have to wait for him 'n his team to get outta the brig's what I mean."

"What?!" Recline's field surged with shock before he could suppress the wild fluxuations. 

Wheeljack's indicators danced with a mixture of mirth and concern. "Yeah. Seems Defensor, minus his left arm who was workin' furiously on you at the time, disobeyed a direct order to subdue Menasor. Or... at least he tried to disobey, except his _right_ arm started objectin' furiously to that, which caused him to come apart and allowed Menasor to escape anyhow. First Aid claims he was directin' Defensor's actions at the time, using his medical overrides. He said he couldn't get ya fully into stasis otherwise. His sentence was delayed 'til all the repairs were done, of course. His team, as you can imagine, insists on being there with him."

Recline couldn't explain the immense relief that filled his spark at the recounting of Menasor's escape. Not without the accompanying memory segments. Just like he couldn't explain the myriad of other emotions that seemed to surround every mention of the Stunticon team. Not... the dread he would expect. Though that was there as well. But clearly he had held at least one of them in his recharging embrace during his captivity. Otherwise he would not feel so... concerned and connected. 

Wheeljack gripped Recline's hand a little tighter in reassurance, sensing his confusion.

"To tell ya the truth, Recline, I think half the reason they gave him the sentence in the first pace was to get the whole team to slow down a bit 'n get some rest. They've responded to three disasters in the past month without a break. Four if ya count Menasor. Otherwise I'm sure Aid'd be here now."

Recline nodded, offlining his optics for a moment to consider his options. He needed those memories. There was no true reason to wait, and he had nothing to do at the moment but to heal. But he wanted... needed to feel First Aid's field in his own, to mold his softer armor to First Aid's angles with an urgency that didn’t make sense at the moment. Not that he would be doing much molding until his metalogel had regenerated. "First Aid's your creation, too. Do you think he should do this with me?"

Wheeljack considered the question, his free hand moved to lightly trace the still-healing gashes in Recline's mesh armor, before coming to a rest over the largest injury. 

"First Aid's... as affected by this as I've ever seen him, Recline. Primus knows, kid's a deep feeler even on the best of days. Not that it ever impacts his professionalism, mind ya. Let me ask ya a different question. What if the situation was the opposite?" 

Recline processed that, his field mingling even more deeply with Wheeljack's to assure the engineer of just how much his creation, and that entire team, meant to him. "I'd want to be there for him," he said a moment later. "I'll wait 'til he's out of the brig. Probably should recharge more while this metalogel cultures anyhow." 

"Wish I could be a berth for you to charge on, Recline," Wheeljack said, leaning down to touch helms, his field buzzing with affection. "Hmm... I wonder if I could..."

"Don't you dare," Recline said, laughing. "It wouldn’t end well for either of us!"

* * *

Wildlife had returned to the clearing when Soundwave touched down, engines blasting soil and debris from the torn earth. Trees were broken and smashed for a quarter filum in every direction, boulders marred with great gouges or torn from their stony moorings. The destruction revealed a hidden bounty for many animals -- songbirds plucked long worms from the churned soil, larger creatures sieved through the dirt in hope of a meal of buried nestlings. 

Perhaps, with luck, Soundwave could uncover a similar prize. 

The carrier’s chestplates slid open, releasing the tight-folded forms of two cassettes. Transforming midair, the two set about their search without need for direction. Laserbeak’s scans set to detect traces left by the battle, Ravage’s long, wiry sensors pricked forward. 

The orn had not gone well. Menasor was restored... for the moment. Megatron was far too pleased to begrudge the battered gestalt the medical attention they required. And Soundwave.... well. He was clearly not to have Breakdown to reprogram, as he had planned. And the pleasureberth had succeeded more thoroughly than Soundwave could even have calculated -- so while Motormaster did technically owe Soundwave a single favor, it was not the long term servitude Soundwave had anticipated. As pleased as Megatron was, chances were good that Soundwave’s blackmail was of little use to him now -- the Lord High Protector would not care how this repair had come about, even if it had been at the hands of the Autobots’ pampered plaything. 

Still... still. Ratbat reported that Breakdown’s verbal and physical tics had increased six percent over the last orn. Motormaster, no fool, was silent about the exact nature of Breakdown’s repairs. But Soundwave would wager his upper left datacable that the patch the berth had applied, whatever its nature, was temporary. Potentially... quite temporary. 

The Stunticons would need the berth again. 

They’d probably intended to keep the berth, to judge by the little oubliette they’d prepared in secret -- as if they could conceal such a thing from Soundwave’s audials. Clearly, they hadn’t expected the vigor of the Autobots’ response. 

And now the Stunticons had lost their pleasure berth. 

Motormaster would grow desperate, soon. And desperate mecha were so much easier to bargain with. 

Ravage pinged a qualified success, and Soundwave glanced up. The big bladeframe trotted back over the broken ground, something held between his teeth. 

Laserbeak landed neatly on his shoulder as Soundwave reached to take the discovery, Ravage dropping it into his palm. The bladeframe sat close beside Soundwave’s leg, the flail of his tailtip curling around his pedes, while the carrier stroked away the dirt and organic debris that clung to Ravage’s chassis. 

Laserbeak twisted his shining neck, examining the device as well. In truth, it looked like nothing more than a buried stone. // _An emergency beacon?_ // he asked, testing the unusual resonance of the bit of metal.

// _More than that,_ // said Soundwave, turning it over in his hands. 

How very, very interesting.

This had _possibilities_.

* * *

Spike Witwicky had once suffered from unmanly giggles for nearly an hour when he found out that Recline had a berth of his own, and how much effort Recline put into making it an especially comfortable one. "It's like Optimus Prime driving a truck," he said when he could get words out. 

Recline's nonsentient berth was covered in a rich array of especially sturdy, yet comfortable earth materials he'd collected over the years -- a delightful combination of sand and silicone-filled cushions covered with thick, sturdy fabrics threaded with conductive accents. The Cybertronian version of a murphy bed that slid out of the wall of his quarters/office was one of Huffer's ever-practical yet artistic creations. The engineer did far more than complain.

Not everyone who recharged with Recline wanted to do so on the berthformer. Some preferred to recharge under him, or next to him. Even some who liked to be on top of the berthformer did so in a manner that might have surprised the young Witwicky. 

The current occupant of Recline's berth was indeed carefully on top of him, supporting most of his weight with his arms and one knee. His surgical mask retracted for a rather relentless and desperate barrage of zapping, glossa-twining, tingly kisses that made sparks fly in more ways than one. 

First Aid, it seemed, had several overloads on the treatment plan before they actually talked about the memories he'd assisted Recline with integrating. Recline felt no need to hurry that along, no need to do anything other than make love with complete abandon to the mech who anchored him and whom he anchored. And oh how he loved the human expression, 'making love' as their chests and cores opened just enough to allow containment fields to blossom outward, aurae tendrils licking tempered armor and mesh. 

With their fields polarized and flaring bright against one another, they slid along each other's core energies like water, and oh how tempting it was to reverse the polarity and simply sink in and become deeply and profoundly one. 

Not yet... it was still too soon, even now. But a desperate need for that completion had replaced the relaxed patience and simple giddy delight that had marked the previous season of their courtship. 

There was no giddiness, no play at the moment. Cables deeply set, they flooded one another with feeling even as desperately reaching sparks strobed like pulsars, spinning in synchronicity. _Love you...love you...almost lost you...want you deeper...closer...deeper...a part of me...love you...mine...yes!...part of others but still mine...love you...almost lost you...almost lost us...have you now...have us now_.

With an audible crack, overload took them, sparks flaring beyond containment for an instant, outer coronae briefly touching, and foxfire dancing over their frames and along the conductive threads of the cushions.

* * *

Recline couldn't recharge. Rather than drifting into shutdown in the pleasant buzz of several overloads, he found himself cycling up, having to focus on keeping his field serene so as not to disturb First Aid's light rest. 

"Don't you dare," First Aid murmured as Recline began to slip out of the berth. "And quit smoothing your field for me. You're supposed to be upset by this."

Recline tensed. There was too much too feel. Too much to process. Despite himself, it began to pour into his field, like water spilling over the top of a dam.

"Talk to me, or show me," First Aid urged him gently. 

"I don't want... I can't," Recline whispered.

"You need to," First Aid's arms tightened around him carefully, mindful of the patches and lack of proper gel. 

Recline whimpered, shuttering his optics, his field swirling with what he tried to hold so tight in his spark. "Menasor could have killed you, or one of your brothers. Or Huffer, or Gears, or any of them! He's so much more powerful now, because I helped his weak link. I... oh Primus Aid, he was hurting so much. And I helped him, more than I should've, and now others could get hurt or die because I did." 

First Aid nodded, not trying to deny Recline's words. Recline drew a heavy vent, and continued. "And then... to have done it at all, Aid. He gave no consent. He was forced to my platform as surely as Motormaster has forced everything else since he onlined. I don't... I don't know if I was helping him, or saving my own mesh, or some fragged up combination. And knowing what he will face, what future he has? Would it have been kinder to do nothing at all and hope he offlined from the glitch?" 

Recline buried his helm into First Aid's neck, listening to the rush of coolant and energon, the smooth whoosh of finely tuned hydraulics and the deeper hum of his spark. A high keen escaped the berthformer, from somewhere deep in his chest. 

"Oh Recline," First Aid began, but Recline shook his helm and keened again, a questing cable seeking First Aid's socket when he couldn't speak.

What if Menasor, or Breakdown on his own, took out First Aid someday? What if he lost this? 

And what about the day that could so easily come when someone he cared for took down the tormented newsparks Megatron had made. 

Recline was a liability, to all of them. 

"Don't you dare," First Aid said fiercely, in something as close to a growl as he was capable of. "You are _not_ a liability. Optimus Prime needs you, and don't even get me started on the others."

Recline tried to suppress the glyphs that floated through his processors. Harsh words that had been said when he'd first enlisted, or far, far earlier, during the vorns on the streets before he'd taken up with Sparkwire. Things he normally did not allow to impact his steady field.

 _Pampered toy. Towers plaything. Waste of energon and protometal. Part of the problem that got Cybertron into this mess_.

"You are a medic," First Aid said, gripping his still healing mesh where he knew it would not hurt. "Do not ever doubt what you are to us, how much we need you. Do you think it's accident that Motormaster took you? There are some kinds of damage I can't help with, and even Ratchet can't fix, and yet you do so, over and again. We need you Recline. And poor Breakdown needed you, even if he's too glitched to know it. And I need you. Primus... when I got that comm, Recline. I... I just couldn't..."

Recline's field was instantly meshing with his, his spark intent on soothing, comforting, absorbing First Aid's sudden wash of grief. 

"I'm supposed to be taking care of you," First Aid sobbed. 

"You are," Recline choked out of the static, spark spinning a bubble of peace around them out of sheer will. "Believe me, you are."

* * *

The first time Motormaster ordered the remainder of their team out of their quarters, Breakdown cringed and shook, waiting for the beating and systems violation to begin. 

"That berth left you something. You have a half-joor, once an orn, to use it, understand?" the massive mech rumbled lowly. Then he wheeled around and left as well, the dented and much abused door stuttering closed behind him.

Breakdown waited, trembling, wondering when Motormaster would return, when the plundering of his systems would begin. At precisely a half joor, the gestalt leader did, indeed did come back, along with the rest of the team. Motormaster said nothing other than to order them all to go drill on the sparring deck. 

"I'll know if you haven't been using it," Motormaster warned the second time. "Every time we combine, and when you can't recharge. Fail to use it, and I'll assume you'd rather I capture that slagging berth again and keep him, or have Soundwave take care of things. Understand?"

Breakdown did. But he could not quite bring himself to trust that the blissful, silent time would go uninterrupted. 

The third time Ramjet had indeed interrupted him, looking for Wildrider, and the entire team fragged the conehead up good in retaliation. 

After that, Breakdown began to believe that the time would, indeed be his and his alone. He hated whatever that pathetic Autobot had left in his systems. But... it did give him a half joor with only himself for company. 

If he didn't use the time for what Motormaster intended, he could lose that. 

The fifth time he was left alone, Breakdown spat a venomous curse and opened the file he had already examined backward and forward. With another curse, he executed it, swearing that if did anything other than what the tag said it would, he'd carve the Autobot apart until there was nothing left but metal shavings. 

The file blossomed open around him, petals of data spreading out in fractal recursions. Ancient data patterns, last glimpsed by mecha long before Cybertron’s fall, when there were no factions, when Cybertron stood strong and undivided. 

And, one step at a time, Breakdown followed the fractals down to a place where everything was still.

_Finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to HopeofDawn for lending her editorial excellence, and to fractalserpent for unstalling this with encouragement, prompts, and awesome co-writing. 
> 
> Recline recently made a guest appearance in Hope and fractal's outstanding Sound and Fury series, in [chapter 5 of Oratorio](http://archiveofourown.org/works/447234/chapters/944499/).


End file.
